Gin & Geologists Don’t Mix Well.

Most earth scientists are deeply passionate about their science, treating it as a vocation -a true calling- and not just any old degree. And they tend to feel the same way about beer, applying just as much discipline and passion to the task of finding a well-pulled pint as they do to ferreting around for a nice trilobite specimen in the local quarry. I’m not sure how it is in other countries, but in Merrie Olde England all geology students possess a mental map of the country based on 2 priorities: rocks and pubs. We know which pubs to visit in any town that’s close to an important geological location, and no college field trip is complete without at least one solid session in a well-known local watering hole.

In my formative high-school years, pre-geology, when we wanted to get really trashed we tended to eschew beer in favour of cheap gin or vodka. And if you’ve ever had a proper gin drunk, you’ll know that’s a really stupid teenage thing to do, inevitably ending with a couple of hours crawling-on-the-bathroom-floor-begging-for-death and then a cataclysmic hangover the next day. I vaguely remember a teenage episode involving me, my friends, and a bottle of gin, followed by a long sojourn down the side of the house, where I lay on the cold path head down in a drain, talking to myself until my parents carried me in doors.

Nails In My Back.

Another youthful white spirit catastrophe involved our annual high school drama club party in an abandoned house on Boundary Road in the Kentish town of Ramsgate. Ah, thespians, what can you do eh? To this day I haven’t a clue what I drank. I do know that I woke up in the back yard in the rain, lying on a sheet of wall board that had small nails or tacks sticking out of it. It was comfortable enough when I passed out, a bit hard perhaps in a waterboard torture sort of way, and I ended up with a lot of small holes in my back and blood spots on my favourite shirt. Not my finest moment.

We Never Bloody Learn

Many years and a few brain cells later, the significantly older and supposedly more intelligent / grown up / wiser geologist me got royally lashed again, this time swilling neat gin in Tehran. Sadly, only one person was there to witness the events of that traumatic evening and he had no idea what was happening, which is kind of a shame because nothing I’ve done since has come close to the gin-soaked idiocy of that night.

I was in Tehran to meet with my managers and a main board director of the bigly mining company I worked for. They’d flown from London to Iran to sign a deal with the Islamic government for a gold project in the north of the country. A lot of expensive legal leg work had gone in to negotiating a comprehensive investment agreement with the Iranians to allow us, a Western mining company, to invest the estimated capital cost of about US$250m.

Trust us. No, Really…

The big knobs duly arrived from London and the next morning they disappeared off to the Mining Ministry for the planned signing ceremony, which didn’t go well. In fact it was a disaster. At the last moment, the Iranian government decided to rip up the detailed 200-page agreement we’d thrashed out at great legal expense and replace it with a wishy-washy 5-page letter agreement. Some heated questions of the “What the fuck happened to the document we’d negotiated?” type were asked of the Iranian officials, to which they replied they’d decided we didn’t need it -we could trust them, really, no honestly we could- so we should sign the letter and leave the future complex investment decisions to this mythical trust which they were actively crapping all over – an irony that escaped them.

It was an offer that our senior director could -and did- refuse, and an hour or two later a crest-fallen management team arrived back at the office for a hasty postmortem where the whole sorry event was officially declared a fuck up. We were pretty much done in Iran.

It’s The End. Drink Gin!

To drown our sorrows, our country manager produced a couple of bottles of illicit Gordons gin, originally procured via the black market for a post signing celebration. It was quickly re-purposed as a pick-me-up to sweeten the rapidly souring mood. Peter, the senior guy on the team, was known for his appreciation of a well-poured gin and tonic. Alas we had lots of lemons but no tonic, so the bitter liquor was downed over ice, flavoured with slices of lemon.

It was all very measured and sensible until some madman (Peter once more) stood on the gin bottle caps and threw their crushed remains away in a fit of bravado, condemning the 5 of us to finishing off both bottles. A couple of hours later I was swimming around happily in the bitter waters of Lake Gordon, for the moment at least, enjoying myself. But as always when me and gin get together for a chat, it went horribly wrong in the end. It was just a matter of time.

The problems started when we got in the car to head back to the not-totally-fabulous Esteghlal International Hotel. Slumped on the back seat with my fellow victims, holding on for dear life, I realised that I was three really big sheets to the wind. Too much neat gin, with only a few pistachio nuts to line the gullet, had done a serious number on me. As the contents of my stomach began to make their unhappiness known, I hung on to the door handle and prayed that I’d live long enough to phone my family and bid them farewell.

Take Me To My Room, I Don’t Feel Well.

The driver dropped us off at the Estaghlal, and I stumbled into the lobby. I’d spent the last 3 or 4 weeks in the hotel; I knew all the staff and had eaten everything on the menu at least once (including the worryingly named estrogen kebabs.) I was also quite friendly with the lift operator who sat there each day, uniformed and dignified on his chair in the elevator, politely pressing the floor buttons for us in exchange for generous tips. Through my juniper-scented fog I noticed hazily that he seemed quite worried about me. Reeking of gin and keeling over at alarming angle, I was barely able to stand and was doing a passable imitation of an old collapsed garden shed.

Then he spoke to me in his simple English; an act of kindness which caused me serious anguish as I tried hard not to throw up all over his pristine wood-lined workplace.

Mr Ralph, are you ok?

No. I feel ill. Must’ve been something I ate. Kebabs. I lied.

I help you to room. Thank God for that, I thought, struggling to get my legs to cooperate with a quick Bleerghhh thrown in for good measure which at that moment meant “thanks“.

Give Me A Hand.

I put an arm around his shoulder, turning my head away to avoid poisoning him with lemon-scented alcohol fumes, and he led me to my room. Opening the door, he helped me to the bedroom where I collapsed onto the bed, terrified of the venomous hangover that was coming at me hard the next morning.

He left. I fell on the floor.

I crawled to the bathroom shedding clothes as I went, and spent a riotous hour or two trying to make out what the blue Arabic script writing said on the side of the shiny white water-filled ceramic thing. After some protracted regurgitation and with a herculean effort, I got back to the bed and fell deeply asleep; a combination of tiredness from the disappointment of a few years of failed effort and having quaffed a pint or two of neat gin tempered only with ice.

Aaaggghhhhh.

Hours later I emerged with a crash from a horrible dream about a disembodied, amputated hand walking all over me in the bed. It was dark and I didn’t have the foggiest idea where I was. I think I was woken by the sound of my own terrified shouting, and I rolled over in a vain attempt to stop the pain in my head, still half lost in the chopped off hand nightmare. As I shifted, something cold, fleshy and heavy with lots of fingers hit me in the face. I remember screaming again and jumping out of bed just in time to see the hand with its bloodied wrist scuttle across the floor and disappear behind the heavy 1970s vintage velvet curtains.

I screamed a bit more just for the hell of it and ran around the room a few times trying to figure out what the fuck was going on and where I was. At the back of my mind, I knew the hand I’d seen heading for the curtains wasn’t actually there, but it seemed real enough that I nervously opened the curtains to check.

To compound my misery, my left arm refused to obey the commands my brain was trying to pass on to it. It was totally dead. I’d lain on it for 4 or 5 hours and had squeezed all the blood out of it until it was completely cold and numb. As I’d woken up and rolled over, the 15lbs of chilled arm meat reluctantly came along for the ride, and my own hand had slapped me across the chops to register its intense annoyance at being woken up.

That Bloody Hurts

Standing upright, swaying slightly, and breathing hard from the shock of what had just happened, the blood started coming back into my arm prompting another bout of shouting and Anglo Saxon cursing. Intensely painful pins and needles now replaced the numbness as my blood decided to have another go at reaching my dead fingers. It took a nasty painful half hour and a lot of shaking to get the feeling back.

Knock Knock

Then came a knock at the door which was all I bloody needed. Leave me alone you vicious bastards I muttered quietly as I opened the door. It was my friendly lift operator. He’d heard screaming and shouting as he yo-yoed up and down in his lift past my floor and tracked the ungodly wailing to my room, bless him. He was just checking up to make sure I was OK after seeing me so ill in the lift. I opened the door a smidge and peered out through red eyes, smelling pretty ripe in that dreadful hungover way, and assured him all was fine; I’d had a bad dream no doubt caused by the bad kebab.

Must be fever, he said; I call doctor?

No all good, I lied again and closed the door, retreating to my bed to suffer the worst hangover in the sordid history of mankind’s adventures with alcohol. The next day lasted 36 miserable hours instead of the usual 24.

What have I learned from all this? Neat gin is a weapon of war that causes limb loss and hallucinations. Avoid at all costs.

And Remember…

One day you’ll wake up with a really terrible gin-based hangover. Lying in bed, you’ll be desperate for something to read to take your mind off the awful painful thumping in your head. What could be better than the UrbanCrows blog? The pain of reading my terrible pieces will distract you long enough you’ll forget you were ever hungover. Please subscribe using the juniper-scented subscription box at the top of this page.